Chapter Seven
Linc couldn’t stop thinking about Thursday night as he and Kash lay on the warm hood of his SUV, watching planes take off and land at the small airstrip near Rockville the Saturday after Thanksgiving.
He’d learned the trick about using the engine’s residual heat to stay warm from his dad.
When he’d take him to do exactly what they were doing now, watching the planes.
The hood would eventually cool down, but when it did, he’d simply get up, start the engine, and leave it running for ten minutes or so.
Thanksgiving night, he’d fallen asleep with Harper draped over him.
He’d woken up at three thirty-two in the morning, with Harper still sound asleep in his lap.
Some people wouldn’t think that was anything special, but for Linc, it was everything.
He didn’t remember any of his dreams. Hell, he didn’t think he’d had any dreams.
Getting five solid hours of sleep was unheard of for him. He wasn’t sure if Harper was a miracle worker, or if he’d just been so exhausted that his body had literally shut down.
He didn’t think it was the latter, because there’d been times in the past when he’d been just as exhausted and still woken up with nightmares after only an hour of rest.
So that left Harper as the reason he was able to sleep. Really sleep.
He’d sat in that chair, holding her for another two hours, until she began to stir. Two hours that he’d usually spend pacing, or rehashing the events that had led to him being chaptered out of the Air Force.
She’d been adorable upon waking. Groggy and confused about where she was, then mortified that she’d slept on top of him all night. But Linc refused to let her dwell on it.
All day Friday, he’d felt energized. As if he could take on the world. They’d done just as Harper had suggested. Went out to see a movie, then came home and played games, cooked, read books, and just enjoyed spending time together.
Linc had hoped to repeat the night before, but Harper went upstairs to bed the same time as Kash. She was working today, and had wanted a decent night’s sleep before dealing with the craziness of the holiday shopping season.
If Linc had any doubt that Harper was the reason he’d actually slept—and slept well, at that—it was confirmed when he’d woken up sweaty, with his heart racing, only ninety minutes after going to bed.
He’d done everything he could think of to get back to sleep, but it was no use.
He’d ended up pacing the house, trying to outrun his demons . . . with no luck.
As a result, he was grumpy and kind of a jerk when Harper made her way downstairs this morning.
He felt bad now, but at the time, in some warped way of thinking, he’d blamed her for his shit night.
It wasn’t her fault, not in the least, but he’d been short with her anyway, not saying much before she’d headed out the door.
After Kash had come downstairs and asked if they were still going to the airfield, Linc almost said no, that something had come up. But he didn’t want to lie to the boy, and because Kash was so excited about the outing, it was impossible to say no to him.
So here they were. Lying on the hood of his SUV, watching planes take off and land in the chilly November air, while memories assaulted Linc.
Memories of the boy he used to be. Of lying just like this with his dad, talking about his future, what he wanted to do, where he wanted to go, of how he wanted to save the world.
There was no doubt that he’d done some heroic things, had saved lives, had taken lives as well.
Linc was proud of his service to his country.
And it was funny how he’d ended up full circle.
Back here in Maine, doing exactly what he’d done so many years ago, with another boy who was eager to grow up. To make a difference in the world.
He had no doubt that Kash would make those differences too. Not in the way Linc had, by joining the military, but with his brain. His smarts. He was going to find new planets, maybe even discover sentient life somewhere far beyond their skies.
They’d talked about nothing in particular for a while, the weather, the food they’d had at Thanksgiving, Zach’s lobster shack, The Lobster Buoy, and about the crate race that Kash had won.
There was a break in planes coming and going, and Linc figured this was as good a time as any to bring up the topic he very much wanted to talk about.
“How’s school going?”
“Fine,” Kash said quickly. Almost too quickly. “Science is fun. I don’t mind math, but English . . . yuck. And art feels like a waste of time. I suck at it, and it’s not making me a more well-rounded individual or any of that crap that people say it should.”
Linc couldn’t help but laugh at that. “Well, all you have to do is pass. You don’t have to get an A.”
“Yes, I do,” Kash countered. “If I want to get into MIT, Harvard, or my first choice, the University of Arizona, I need a four point oh. I can’t let freaking art class mess that up.”
“The University of Arizona?” Linc couldn’t help but ask. It was a long way from Maine, and he had a feeling Harper wouldn’t like her baby being so far from home.
“Yeah. It’s the best astronomy program in the US.
It receives the most government funding and gets money from NASA.
It even has an optical engineering program .
. . which is where people learn the science behind optics and design and build objects that use light.
Like lenses, microscopes, and of course . . . telescopes.”
“Right,” Linc said, impressed that even at twelve years old, Kash was already thinking about where he wanted to go to college. At that age, all Linc could think about was planes. Although, given that he’d gone into the Air Force, maybe he’d also known what he wanted to do way back then.
“I’m sorry you aren’t enjoying art, but what about the social aspect of school? I don’t hear you talking about your friends that much.”
Kash was quiet for a moment, then he shrugged. “I hang out with the kids in the robotics club.”
It was like pulling teeth. Linc decided to stop beating around the bush.
“When I was your age, I was bullied in school. I was a late bloomer, scrawny, and a bit of a nerd. There was a group of mean girls who delighted in calling me names and making my life miserable. I did everything I could to try to avoid them, but that wasn’t really possible.”
He wasn’t going to tell Kash that his mom was one of those girls. It was water under the bridge, and the last thing he wanted was to do anything that might undermine the close relationship between mother and son. But he wanted to make sure Kash knew that he could empathize with him.
“You were bullied?” Kash asked, sounding absolutely shocked.
“Yup.”
“I don’t believe you,” he mumbled after a brief silence. “And it’s not very nice to lie, you know.”
“I’m not lying,” Linc insisted. “Hang on.” He sat up a little and pulled out his phone.
“Mom sent pictures to all of us boys a while back. She was going through her albums after our dad died, and I guess feeling nostalgic. She sent them off to be digitized, then sent the link to the albums when they were done.”
Linc had saved the link, of course. The pictures made him laugh at the time. They’d brought back such good memories of growing up with his brothers on Lobster Cove.
He found the email and clicked on the link, scrolling through the folders until he found the one with the year he was in the eighth grade.
He opened it, then passed his phone to Kash.
“That was the year I turned thirteen. I was in the eighth grade. I’m the tallest of the boys in the various pictures. ”
Kash took the phone and began to scroll through the images. He was quiet as he took in the Young family from all those years ago.
He stopped on one picture that still had the power to make Linc wince. He was an awkward-looking kid. Tall, skinny, his hair too long and, as usual, not brushed. He was standing by a table full of model airplanes that he’d spent hours upon hours building.
Linc remembered being so proud of those models. He’d done everything in his power to make them as accurate as possible. He was grinning like a dork and wearing shorts that were too small for him and a T-shirt with the words “Air Force Academy” on the front.
“I brought one of my models to school once,” he said quietly, as Kash stared at the picture.
“I wanted to show it to my best friend, a kid who was just as into planes as I was. I was carrying it down the hall when I first got to school, and who did I run into? The mean girls. They surrounded me, taunted me, made fun of my model, told me I was the biggest geek they’d ever met.
Said I was going to be a virgin the rest of my life because no girl would ever want to date such a huge nerd.
Rinky-Dink Linc. That’s what they called me. They were relentless.
“By the time the bell rang and they finally wandered off, giggling like a bunch of hyenas, I was devastated. I’d worked so hard on that model, and they’d made it seem like such a stupid thing. I threw it away in the first trash can I came across. I still regret letting them get to me like that.”
Kash looked up from the phone and glanced at Linc. “They call me Trash-Kash,” he admitted in a soft voice.
“Are they older than you or in your grade?”
“Older. The guy who picks on me the most is in the eleventh grade. His name is Donny. And his girlfriend, Ginger. I mostly just see them at lunch, but they always look for me. Make fun of me being in robotics club. My red hair. How skinny I am. It doesn’t matter if I ignore them or try to think of things to say back, it just eggs them on more.
I hate it. I hate them. School sucks because of them. ”